Saratoga Sales Q and A With Conrad Bandoroff

[Wandering Eyes]

At last year’s Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale, Denali Stud sold the co-sales topper, a colt by Curlin out of the Grade I winner River’s Prayer, for $1 million. The Denali team has come back with an impressive lineup for 2018, and has had some timely updates with recent graduates. Ben Massam sat down with 26-year old Conrad Bandoroff, a 2017 graduate of the Godolphin Flying Start program, back for his second Saratoga at his family’s Denali consigment.

BM: You’re coming off a big 2017 at Saratoga. Tell us about your consignment this year.

CB: This is one of our largest select consignments that we’ve brought up here. We love selling at this sale. We think it’s a really good place to market and sell the horse. Our track record speaks for itself, and if you bring the right horses, you can be rewarded really nicely up here. Denali has been fortunate to sell a seven-figure horse the last three years, and two of the last three years we’ve had the sale topper or co-sale topper up here, and we’re looking forward to another strong draft this year. We have 11 to sell, which is a strong number for us. But we kind of are playing to that market trend of quality.

We find that one important element in recruiting horses to come to Saratoga, and selecting horses to come to this sale is you really need to cater to a domestic buying bench. While there are certainly Europeans who come over for this sale, there are not as many, because since it’s a smaller book and there’s not as much incentive to get a lot of them over here.

BM: If you had to a name a few standouts in this consignment, who would they be?

CB: One of the ones that I’m looking forward to is hip 169, who is a son of Into Mischief out of Azara. Azara is a half-sister to queen of the turf Tepin. It’s great to have a horse that’s related to a horse of her caliber, but as well as someone who has some Saratoga form. She’s raced here, and she’s one that’s certainly is going to resonate with a lot of people.

We also have hip 255, a son of Uncle Mo, out of a mare called Ivana Beat Yabad. She is out of Ivanavinalot, so that makes the dam a half-sister to Songbird, nine-time Grade I winner. Obviously, Songbird was incredible. She was brilliant. She, again, kind of ticked that Saratoga box. She loved this track and some of her best days were on the Saratoga oval, so really excited to have this kind of very athletic and smooth son of Uncle Moe.

Hip 2 is a daughter of Liam’s Map out of Jessica is Back. Jessica is Back is Grade I winner, and she’s a gorgeous filly. She’s scopey and athletic. One thing that we look at when we’re selecting horses for the sale is, we have this great show ring, and we’ve had a lot of real estate. We love to tell people when we’re pitching Saratoga, we’ve got the best showing area on the campus. And so a horse with a big walk, this is a great place to sell them because they have the real estate to really showcase that. And we’re excited about her. Liam’s Map, there’s good buzz on him. We’ve seen a lot of Liam’s Maps that we like. Obviously he was a terrific son of Unbridled’s Song for Teresa and Vinnie Viola and she’s one that we’re certainly excited to have up here.

Hip 240 is an American Pharoah out of Hessonite. It’s the first crop of American Pharaoh, and so that’s certainly exciting. And this is a mare that we’re very excited about. She earned over $750,000 and was a graded stakes winner, and a hard-knocking mare, and this son of American Pharaoh is just a big, strong horse. He’s a beast. He’s just very physically imposing and one that we’re certainly excited to get off the van up here.

I’d be remiss to not mention we’ve got hip 222, a Tapit filly out of For Royalty, the dam of Constellation, so a Grade 1 producer. But also more than that, she’s 100% stakes producer, so every foal that’s gone to the track has been a stakes performer in some form or fashion. We sold the mare for November for $2.1 million to Summer Wind, and so we’re really excited to have her up here. She’s a very classy daughter of Tapit, and looks a lot like the mare.

BM: You’ve had some success already from last year’s sales graduates.

CB: We sold Chocolate Kisses (Candy Ride {Arg}) who just won at Saratoga for Mark Casse and Jack Oxley this past week, so it’s great to come back to Saratoga and to have a two-year-old winner here. That’s a dream for an owner. We’re bringing horses that we perceive to be Saturday afternoon horses and are hopefully going to come on for the owners and run on big days. We sold that horse for Pin Oak and obviously we’re thrilled for them and we have the half-brother selling in September, a very attractive son of More Than Ready.

BM: The Saratoga Sale has a unique feel, and people have racing fresh in their mind. How does this sale set itself apart from other sales because of its location, and how is it unique?

CB: The racing provides success in the sales arena as well. On Saturday, we were represented by Tapwrit in the Whitney, who was a $1.2-million dollar Saratoga yearling. So that buzz can carry over to the sales. The atmosphere in Saratoga is what makes this so successful. The fact that it’s a night sale and it’s an event, people get dressed up. And it’s not too big a group of horses. It’s one of the great things about bringing horses to Saratoga. It’s a more relaxed environment. You have the ability to sit and talk to people and have a chat. That’s great for us as consignors because it allows us to talk to the buyers and really promote the horses. They’re not in such a rush that they don’t have time for you to do that.

BM: On a personal level, how has your career progressed since you’ve graduated from Flying Start in 2017?

CB: This is now my second year back here with Denali Stud, and the first year was great. This has always been my dream job. Anybody who knows me knows that I’ve always had dreams of coming back to Denali and working alongside my father and the first year was fantastic. From a business standpoint, we had a very good year with September and with our strongest November that we’ve ever, ever had. I’m looking forward from going to strength to strength and trying to build off of last year.

BM: Is there anything that you have specifically learned in the Flying Start course that you think you’ve applied in your first two years back here?

CB: You learn so much over the course of the two years, not only from an industry and horsemanship standpoint, but just relationships and the people that you meet, and that’s one of the biggest benefits to the program. But one of the things that was really unique about my Flying Start experience is I knew going into the program where I wanted to end up. Coming back to Denali was no state secret. I got to travel the world and then you get to observe some of these best practices from the leading operations the world over, so I got to look and see “well, could that work back in Kentucky” or “why do they do that” and “this is an interesting idea.” So I came back and I had a lot of ideas to present to our team. We have a fantastic team with our farm manager Gary Bush and our yearling manager Donnie Snellings, as well as their assistants. We have a system that works really well and we’re always working to improve it but I’d say from the program, getting to see some of the best practices of these world-class operations and to come back and try to apply them to Denali Stud was a great benefit.

 

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